“Thou Shalt Not Covet” is the opening text of Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love (2026), taken directly from the Ten Commandments (and as the end credits will note, a loving tribute to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog TV series). It’s a tenet that implores us not to envy others or desire something (or someone). It’s a fitting coda for Possible Love, a tenderly nuanced, phenomenally epic tale of envy and empathy, where people trap themselves in constraints and feel trapped by others — an intimate story of fragmented love, lost communication, corporate exploitation, and economic disparity. 

How can we relate to each other in the 21st century, as corporate mergers and restructuring segregate us and our ability to believe that we’re a united whole? What happens when laborers, their families, and co-workers’ fragile economic security is taken away, causing rifts in those interpersonal relationships? Why does someone standing across from me have it better than I do, and how can I be that?

Lee Chang-dong poses a series of probing questions, yet brilliantly doesn’t answer them directly. Coming from a background as a novelist, his respect for the reader has always crossed over to film viewers. For him, the goal isn’t to settle on something as mystifying and infinite as human desire, but to explore it through beautiful performances and a cinematic style akin to a masterful painter creating his canvas. In Lee’s world, people are complicated, there are no easy resolutions, and people are as palpably fraught as those you’d read in your favorite books. 

Possible Love is not only Lee reminding us why he’s one of our most emphatic humanist filmmakers out there, but why stories told in the way Possible Love is are essential right now. Cinema can be both an escapist tool and a portal to lives we’ll never touch. No different than the digital doom scroll we subject ourselves to, but unlike the callous tech overlords feeding off our anxieties, jealousy, and sadness, Lee sees us. 

Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) was recently laid off, along with many employees, by SP Heavy Industries due to corporate restructuring and a worker-led strike. His wife, Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), works at a mask factory and does her best to support her husband, whose demeanor and behavior have become more closed off and dissociated. They run into a documentary filmmaker, Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), after a funeral wake for an employee Ho-seok worked with. She’s making a film documenting the many laborers affected by these layoffs, their strike efforts, and portraying their familial lives. Her husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), is the son of a wealthy family and supports his wife’s film project. 

Mi-ok takes a liking to Ye-ji, fascinated by her project and welcoming her into her family’s inner life; their friendship will lead to significant changes in both families. Ye-ji’s main desire is to probe Ho-seok about his experiences during the strike and a famous incident that led the police to violently break it up. It’s a wound Ho-seok is reluctant to open, even as he avoids group therapy sessions with other workers, skips his son’s birthday, and watches a different child’s party. 

Lee’s film traces these two married couples and the untapped, unexplored cosmic space between them. Ye-ji’s friendship with Mi-ok becomes more one-sided and challenged, as their privileges (or lack thereof) and freedoms become exposed; Ho-seok’s masculinity becomes dwindled and precarious, feeling pressured to keep his angst and self-hatred contained, just as Ye-ji wants to press for an interview, as a jewel piece to her art. It’s a delicate balance, a situation-ship of sorts, as Lee’s measured filmmaking allows the artistry of his and co-writer Oh Jung-mi’s screenplay to afford each character depth and humanity, more than if a different filmmaker took hold. 

All four characters feel realistic and grounded, as if you’re part of the group, living within the peculiar, minute details of their lives. Lee channels some of his greatest strengths as a director, aided by breathtakingly steady images from cinematographer Kim Ji-yong. Many scenes play out in extended, long static shots, as the performers easily immerse themselves in these characters, or as the breathtaking environments of Mi-ok’s modest middle-class home feel relatable, in contrast to Sang-woo’s exuberant, elaborate vacation home, which is isolating to the point of suffocation. 

Lee even lets himself experiment with an elaborate tracking shot in an intense action scene, as Ho-seok recounts the day the police interrupted his group’s protests. We see how that state-mandated violence traumatizes him, equipping him with his cynical, depressed shell. It’s a fantastic sequence in which Lee, at the masterful age of 72, can whip out one of the most viscerally intense and emotionally fraught scenes of the year. 


Image Credit to Netflix via IndieWire

To have all four actors deliver superb, equally rich performances may seem like no easy feat, yet for Lee, it’s as comfortable as it is necessary. Every actor is given ample time to excavate the roots of their characters, and Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu show that care beautifully. Their chemistry as a complicated couple is one of Possible Love’s greatest accomplishments, as their marriage is tested to the limits, straining for normalcy yet pressured to conform to some societal expectation. 

Jeon is simply extraordinary; as Mi-ok yearns for love and success, her infatuation and ease of comfort with Ye-ji is transfixing and inviting. Her struggle to connect with her husband reinforces her tether, making the couple’s bond tighter. She’s carefree, yet also hurting — for herself, her husband, her son, and even for a different life. Being part of Ye-ji’s orbit feels gratifying and addictive, yet it comes at a price she soon reckons with, and Jeon’s performance becomes more powerful and encapsulating of Possible Love’s themes of yearning and mournfulness. 

Sul has the hardest task, spending the first half of the film closed off and morose, his energy trapped inside as he hopes to break free and become the husband and father he wants to be. Yet he’s trapped in this cycle of inadequacy. It’s a soulful performance that culminates in the film’s most heartbreaking moment, as his demons and insecurities let out like a waterfall of gasped breaths and tears. It’s a performance that pulls you in and sucker-punches you in the gut. It’s stupendous work from Sul, who’s worked with Lee going all the way back to Peppermint Candy (1999). Here, it feels like their collaborative work synchronizes into one cohesive film. 

Possible Love is not entertaining the way most Korean cinema has been marketed and sold-to the West as. The South Korean Film industry has suffered greatly, where traditional investors have pulled out of local productions and films like Possible Love can’t be made. Even though Netflix is causing its fair share of problems, it’s a miracle the streamer gave the auteur the funds needed to make his first film in eight years. This is not Parasite (2019), nor is it No Other Choice (2025) — though, those are equally gratifying and spectacularly entertaining films revolving around class and wealth inequality. This is Lee’s reconciliation with how much corporate power and class has not only segregated people but our emotional ability to empathize and connect. Exploitation pervades not just institutions,but people, our relationships — what do we gain in each relationship? Is there opportunity for more than what’s apparent? 

Lee Chang-dong is one of our greatest humanist and dramatists in film working right now, and watching Possible Love is akin to not only reading a rewarding, dense novel, but the spark of re-reading pages because the details lie between sentences and actions. Over 160 minutes of Possible Love, you get more than a weighty drama but a distilled examination of human behavior. It isn’t clinical; rather, it’s captured beautifully by a sincere master of his craft.

Review Courtesy by Amritpal Rai